44 MEGALOPOLITAN LIFE SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 | WWW.BESTOFPHOENIX2025.C0M | BEST OF PHOENIX 2025 disappointment to me.” Brnovich still did his damnedest to snuggle up to the Orange Caligula during the 2022 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, with fundraising appeals featuring a pic of Brno and Trump together. It fooled no one. Trump didn’t endorse him, and Brnovich came in a distant third to creepy Peter Thiel-acolyte Blake Masters. Perhaps Papa Trump felt Brno deserved some reward for shirking his duty to the public on that investigation. Hence, Trump’s recent nomination of Brno to be U.S. ambassador to Serbia. Hey, France, it ain’t. But it sure beats a real job in the private sector, eh Brno? e e e B E S T P O O P S C O O P RACHEL MITCHELL Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell really doesn’t like it when people give her shit. So when someone used a prank service to send her a plastic baggie full of alleged animal dung for Valentine’s Day this year, the notoriously humorless Mitchell was not amused and decided to waste taxpayer bucks on a police investigation. The resulting Phoenix police report reads, “Rachel stated that she and her husband went to dinner last night, and when they got home, her husband told her there was a package at the door. After bringing it inside, she opened it and found the bag.” The “husband” in question is apparently Mitchell’s alleged paramour, Paul Stout, who once called the cops on a New Times reporter for having the temerity to phone him asking for a comment on an unre- lated story. (Note: We don’t know if they’re actually hitched, but stranger things have happened.) Mitchell told the po-po she desired prosecution of the anonymous poop- sender, though for what is anyone’s guess. C’mon, Rachel. If you’re an elected official, you have to take a little crap now and then, especially when you’re so darn good at dishing it out. e e e B E S T C A R E E R D O W N G R A D E ANDREW THOMAS Before he was disbarred in 2012 for misusing his high office to go after his political enemies and anyone who got in his way, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas was a man on the rise, a conservative darling who came within a hair’s breadth of becoming the Republican nominee for Arizona Attorney General in 2010. Post- disbarment, it was all downhill for Thomas’ career. He ran in the GOP primary for governor in 2014, but didn’t win, place or show, coming in fifth with a mere 8% of the vote. Thomas then vanished like a 21st-century Jimmy Hoffa. New Times tracked him down earlier this year, finding Thomas in Texas, where he’d become a film- maker of sorts, shooting Christian rom-coms like his 2022 effort, “Lake Lavon,” in which two star-crossed lovers discover each other, the perils of playing Twister with the oppo- site sex and, naturally, Jesus. In his copious free time, Thomas wrote a Substack blog in which he claimed he’d been the victim of “leftist crocodiles” back in Phoenix, where he’d supposedly taken on a corrupt establish- ment and been cast into the outer darkness as a result. Should we pity “Candy Andy,” the man who once terrorized Maricopa County’s citizens with lawfare? Nah, we’re just glad he’s where he can do Arizonans the least harm — in another state. e e e B E S T P O L I T I C A L E G O M A N I A RUBEN GALLEGO Ruben Gallego has been a U.S. Senator for less than a year and already he’s flipping pork burgers and eating boiled eggs on a stick while sashaying through Iowa and fanning the flames of a possible, um, presi- dential run in 2028. Give us a frickin’ break. Bad enough that he sold his soul to Old Scratch during the 2024 campaign by down- playing a federal investigation of the Phoenix Police Department in order to score the endorsement of a powerful cop union, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association. And don’t get us started on Gallego’s vote in favor of the ass-backwards Laken Riley Act, passed to slake the fears (and bigotry) of the anti- immigrant crowd. “I know how to help Democrats win in really hard states,” Gallego recently told Iowans. Indeed, it’s called dumb luck. Which is what Gallego was handed when Republicans nominated right- wing nutjob Kari Lake to be their standard- bearer in the 2024 Senate contest. Even so, it was hardly a blowout, with Gallego besting Lake by less than 3 percentage points. Presi- dent? Of the United States of America? Puh- lease. Especially not with a comb-over worse than Trump’s. e e e B E S T C I T I Z E N A C T I V I S T STACEY CHAMPION Whether she’s handing out water to the homeless, berating politicians on her X account or blasting Arizona Corporation Commissioners for tut-tutting the heat- related deaths of senior citizens, Stacey Champion comes on like a wrecking ball. Champion’s regular gig is as a successful PR strategist and owner of her own company, Champion PR + Consulting. But Champion’s passion is bird-dogging powerful corporate and government interests and exposing their ill deeds, such as Maricopa County’s under- count of deaths from our deadly summers or APS’ betrayal of its past commitment to “clean energy” and going “carbon-free” by 2050. In comments at an ACC meeting in August, Champion skewered commis- sioners’ go-to excuse for sucking up to utility companies — i.e., “affordability” — telling
